Sports writer for The Age

Peter Siddle will this week begin a training regimen focused on regaining his pace - and with it his fast-bowling berth in the Australian Test team - for the October series against Pakistan and the home summer series against India.

The 29-year-old has been brought home early from a county stint in England with Nottinghamshire, in which his 11-match, first-class stint reaped 37 wickets at an average of 31.48 from 352 overs.

Siddle finished the Test series in South Africa earlier this year out of Australia's Test team for the first time in 15 months. While he is likely to regain his position for the series against Pakistan in the United Arab Emirates due to long-term injuries to Ryan Harris (knee) and James Pattinson (back), coach Darren Lehmann has publicly declared the sturdy right-armer had to be bowling faster than he was in South Africa to be a first-choice bowler.

Team physiotherapist Alex Kountouris said the Victorian would barely be bowling for the next month and would instead prioritise the strength and conditioning training he had been unable to complete in recent seasons due to Australia's busy Test schedule.

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"The reason we believe his pace might've dropped is he played all those games in the past 15 months [before his omission] ... and he just hadn't had a break ... a short period to regenerate and allow his body to recover," Kountouris said.

"There is a change in focus for him this year, but it's mainly because the program allows for it as much as anything. It's something we haven't had for the past three years."

The prospect of highly rated paceman Josh Hazlewood pressing for a debut against either Pakistan or India has taken a blow as he suffered a side strain in his first competitive match since last season, on Sunday for Australia A in Darwin.

"That's a bit of a blow because we were really looking to him to be ready and be one of those group of [potential Test] bowlers going into the start of the summer," Kountouris said of the 23-year-old. "Hopefully it doesn't cost us much time, but we're just having that assessed at the moment."

With Pattinson out of contention to face Pakistan, and Harris, Jackson Bird (back) and maybe Nathan Coulter-Nile (hamstring surgery) set to join him, Cricket Australia has a confidential shortlist of pacemen whose training is being tailored to the potential for them to be part of the squad for the UAE, rather than the season-starting Matador BBQs One-Day Cup for most state players.

CA said its just-completed injury review of last season was generally positive.

The review found, unsurprisingly, the overall situation in terms of matches missed by contracted international and domestic players due to injury overwhelmingly hinged on the health of fast bowlers, especially bowlers under 25 - even more so under 22 - who typically bowl above 135km/h.

"Obviously the young guys are a major challenge to us," said team doctor Peter Brukner, explaining the belief those young bowlers were most susceptible because their bones, particular within their backs, are not fully formed.

Kountouris said all of CA's injury-preventing strategies, which include the monitoring and sometimes restriction of bowling workloads, had to be endorsed by head coach Lehmann and bowling coaches Craig McDermott and Ali de Winter.

"What we do do is let the coaches and selectors and all the key stakeholders know where the risks are," he said.

"I don't tell Darren Lehmann what to do. You know what he'd be telling me if I told him that. We just help him . . . get the most out of the players."

The medical staff insisted their plan to reduce injury prevalence among young fast bowlers would not extend to petitioning for rigid in-match bowling limits for them, and would instead be limited to broader guidelines for injury prevention.

Kountouris said a key reason Australia was able to field an unchanged pace attack of Harris, Siddle and Mitch Johnson throughout last summer's Ashes was because "they were all mature bowlers ... in the age group [where] we know they become more resilient, and can get through the sort of loads involved in playing back-to-back Tests".

The physiotherapist also praised the then-contentious decision by selectors to withdraw Johnson from a one-day series in India that Australia was on the cusp of winning in favour of playing in the Sheffield Shield, insisting that preparation helped him excel against England.